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Friday, August 30. 2013

by Michael Tatum

I spent the latter half of July and the majority of August
suffering from what I thought was a terrible bronchial infection --
incessant dry cough, lung pain, and, most importantly, incredibly low
energy, so much so that any intellectual heavy lifting I wanted to do
was pretty much tough going. So I skipped last month's column to
recuperate, not really taking into account how long it was actually
going to take me to recuperate. My doctor informed me earlier
this afternoon that I may have unchecked asthma -- considering that I
tend to suffer health-wise around this time of year (for similar
reasons, I also skipped my August 2012 column, and August 2011 was
short by my usual length), it may just be that late-summer allergies
aggravate it. So consider this installment written under duress, with
calibrated puffs of Budesonide (now there's a word for you fellow
collectors out there) the supposed cure for the rockcrit blues -- Lord
knows an otherwise boring August wasn't cutting it. Hopefully I'll
clear out what's remaining in my queue next month, and bring a little
something newer than repackaged Britney Spears to the table.

Kool and Kass: Peaceful Solutions (free download) If
I had to venture a guess, Das Racist's Heems and Kool AD parted ways
because the former began viewing himself as a "professional," in it
for a committed career rather than purely for art's sake, hence why
Heems' 2012 projects, the solid Wild Water Kingdom and the
superior Nehru Jackets, trump the spaced-out, aleatoric grab
bags his inconsistent ex-partner tossed up to the internet
concurrently. Like it or not, form has function, which is why Kool
needs someone like producer-rapper Kassa Overall, a musician's
musician type whose own 2012 mixtape cleverly bit (swallowed whole,
actually) hits from such respected hip hop titans as Katy Perry and
Jennifer Lopez. Here, without sacrificing any of the zonked-out
spaciness that distinguished Kool's 51, 63, and
19 (see what I mean by aleatoric?), Kass reins in his partner
just enough, so that a "boast" like "Under the influence, but I'm
congruent" might not convince the highway patrol, but for our purposes
will more than suffice. Though outlawing credit cards satisfies my
square sensibilities more than legalizing weed regardless of how I
voted on Prop 19 (please tell me that number is a coincidence), it
bums me out to report politics figures less into what they do than
advocating a blissed-out solipsism exemplified by the idyllic
"Pleasance," which contains the most complaisant "We don't give a fuck
about a thing at all" ever uttered on a hip hop recording. Best of
several unwitting cameos, in a field that includes glossolalia-struck
newscaster Serena Branson and brazen publicity slut "Ray J" Norwood:
Bizzy Bone, whose manic, ten-minute-plus outpouring at a Houston radio
station needs to be heard to be believed. As for those miffed Kool
once again recycles that classic "art, man/Robert Altman" verse, he's
got a special riposte: "Sometimes I repeat myself -- get used to it."
Well, not really a riposte -- more like a blasé statement of
purpose. Which is hilarious, and totally in
character. A

The Jeffrey Lewis and Peter Stampfel Band: Hey Hey
It's . . . the Jeffrey Lewis and Peter Stampfel
Band (self-released) Seventy-four, still warbling like a
coyote with his tail caught in the feed of a paper shredder, and
continuing to make that yelp sound like he's found the secret of
Eternal Youth, Peter Stampfel has no problem staying young -- indeed,
one of the problems with recent projects with the Ether Mob and Baby
Gramps has been finding compatriots who can keep up with his boundless
vivacity. But although the far droller Jeffrey Lewis isn't my idea of
a sparkplug -- one might say he plays Harold to Stampfel's Maude --
their imperfect vocals don't join together like brothers so much as
gleefully play against each other, with Lewis' mopey baritone resting
on that bass clef like a chin on a cupped palm, and Stampfel's wild
tenor harmonies sprightly bouncing all across the staff to wherever it
gosh darn feels like. Their 2011 summit Come on Board was
excellent, but bassist Isabel Martin and drummer Heather Wagner, doing
double duty as backing singers cum rah-rahing cheering section
(I can't get enough of them exhorting J&P to spell "dook" on the
re-make of "Duke [sic] of the Beatniks"), turn them into a proper
band, radiating so much jocund camaraderie the sort of man who knows
the difference between a bee-det and a bee-ret might
call it "esprit de corps." And the songs! Boiling them down to their
thematic essence doesn't do them justice -- walking your dog,
skipping-and-jumping-not-walking down NYC sidewalks, lollygagging as a
bid for immortality, the life and times of "fucking Snooki," "Indie
Bands on Tour," having more fun than anyone. Hawking merriment as
spiritual achievement, no one's pulled off a trick like this since the
Ramones -- except Johnny R. had no need for fiddles and banjos.
A

Daniel Romano: Come Cry With Me (Normaltown/New West)
Despite its high Metacritic score and Polaris Prize long-listing, I
stayed clear of this little item for weeks: the parodically lachrymose
title, Romano's nudie suits and Tom Selleck mustache, it was all just
a little too much. Indeed, the first listen confirmed my suspicions:
Romano, whose furry baritone suggests Bobby Bare, Jr.'s hapless
picked-upon younger brother, clings so tightly to classic country
conventions (steel guitar, girlie choruses, drummers who know nothing
other than brush sticks) that he veers closer to pastiche than tribute
-- in a spiritual sense, resembling Weird Al Yankovic more so than
"authentic" torch bearers as far flung as Randy Travis and Lucinda
Williams. And yet perversely, that's what makes this trip down
Bizzaro World Music Row so uncommonly fresh, especially given how
straight-faced Romano delivers his often outrageous original material,
from the Buck Owens spoof "I'm Not Crying Over You" (he's not
brokenhearted, just a method actor), the "A Boy Named Sue" send-up
(he's not a poultry farmer, just a chicken hawk) and the "Mama Tried"
lampoon "Middle Child" (he's not a bad kid, just a victim of Dr. Kevin
Leman's quacked-up birth order theory). A little more soul and a band
that's not the artiste over-over-overdubbing himself and he might even
fool Nashville. A

Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate
McGarrigle (Nonesuch) Even if it has to cheat do it (ex-hubby
Loudon's "Swimming Song," sister Anna's inevitably included "Heart
Like a Wheel"), these thirty-two songs (two repeated) culled from
three tribute shows in London, Toronto, and New York more than prove
McGarrigle's standing as one of the late twentieth century's finest
songwriters. True, this could have used some judicious pruning -- one
disc rather than two would have sufficed, and although inheritors Rufus
and Martha Wainwright dominate as they should, stubbornly sticking to
the original keys leads to periodic gaffes (Rufus belting "Kiss and
Say Goodbye" as if his mama was really Ethel Merman, flubbing a high
note in the melody of "First Born," then wisely retreating into the
ensemble by ducking down into a harmony). That being said, many of
the reinterpretations are downright remarkable: Rufus' coy "Southern
Boys," Martha's fearless "Matapedia," even Norah Jones' delicate "Talk
to Me of Mendocino." Histrionic youngsters balance out plaintive old
timers, sometimes on the same song, sometimes on competing
interpretations, and if the kids don't realize playing to the canary
fanciers is the self-consciously arty aesthetic obverse of the
doe-eyed chorines who cozy up to Simon Cowell and the like, well,
there are worse crimes to exculpate. But I could do with a few more
recastings like Broken Social Scene's "Mother Mother," which strips
away the original's stilted art rock moves and turns it into something
that could almost be mistaken for pop music. Or, as my wife commented
from upstairs after the umpteenth piano stool ballad, "Michael, could
you change this please? This is really depressing."
B+

Britney Spears: The Essential Britney Spears
(Jive/Legacy) Dividing neatly into is-she-or-isn't-she and soiled
dove periods, this may at first seem like way too much -- she couldn't
cut a one-disc deal in 2004 without stooping to a Bobby Brown cover,
so how could she pull off a two-disc pig-out a mere three studio
albums later? Except that for a Disney reprobate turned well-coifed
train wreck not known for memorable self-expression, mental stability,
or singing with the voice God gave her, ace producer Max Martin and
her various handlers do have a remarkable talent for, if not actually
articulating the nitty-gritty of Spears' inscrutable inner life, then
elucidating the thoughts and feelings that her many devoted fans have
projected on her. After flashing us the tight thong beneath her
Catholic girl school uniform in the undeniable bombshell that
detonated her career, she opines, in a mid-tempo ballad you long
forgot assuming you've actually heard it -- "But if you really want me
move slow/There's things about me you just have to know." Things
which, believe it or not, she actually reveals, slowly but surely,
over the course of what is now a fairly impressive career: her
smothering via the overprotection of others, her ambivalence toward
her fabricated early image, and -- over and over again -- her
propensity to hook up and hold onto the wrong guy. Miley Cyrus,
beware: this might happen to you, the career arc if not the
efficiently executed songs. Now if only so many of those early ballads
weren't so, as Britney herself might say, barftastic.
A

Superchunk: I Hate Music (Merge) Paul Westerberg
hated music because it had too many notes, Mac McCaughan hates it
because even though he's generated plenty of money from giving a home
to Arcade Fire, Spoon, and the like (and bless him for that) he hasn't
made much scratch from the band that inspired him to start his own
label in the first place. Still, while I'd be the first to admit that
2010's Majesty Shredding and now this more tuneful follow-up
constitute the best records in the two decades he's been trying, you'd
think he'd have more subjects to explore than his own relationship to
"the scene": tweaking a busted amp at the front of the house, rocking
a festival in Barcelona, meeting at a bar called the "Low F," catching
a ferry to the ballpark, "looking at girls/shopping for jeans" -- surely
there's more to McCaughan's world than this? Yeah yeah, the high-grade
tunes do indeed make me pump my proverbial first. But back in the
early '90s when McCaughan wasn't putting out records half this
memorable, the indie mill churned out a record this good every month
-- a record that would occupy us momentarily, until our
attention-deficient noggins moved along to the next one. I mean,
Pavement dedicated a whole album to their scene, too. But if McCaughan
has devised a perfect melody on the order of "Range Life" or a lyric
as foxy as "Stone Temple Pilots/They're elegant bachelors," I'm Gerard
Cosloy. A

Honorable Mentions

El-P/Killer Mike: Run the Jewels (Fool's Gold) Better
to tag-team hammering that one note than to bludgeon it on your own
("Sea Legs," "DDFH") ***

Young Fathers: Tape One (Anticon) Not quite out of
the basement yet ("Rumbling," "Romance") ***

Dessa: Parts of Speech (Doomtree) You'd figure
someone who teaches lyric writing in her spare time would realize "If
you don't aim for the center, it's a waste of the art" is a
double-edged metaphor ("Skeleton Key," "Call Off Your Ghost")
**

Pet Shop Boys: Electric (X2) Work tapes from the
euphoric dance floor record I've been waiting years for them to make
-- I mean, these are work tapes, right? ("The Last to Die," "Love Is a
Bourgeois Construct") **

Daft Punk: Random Access Memories (Daft
Life/Columbia) Nile Rodgers yes, Paul Williams no, and with that
kind of arbitrary taste in collaborators here's betting next time they
gun for George Benson ("Give Life Back to Music," "Get Lucky")
*

Trash

Camera Obscura: Desire Lines (4AD) These twee
Glaswegians, buddies with Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch, titled
an early release Underachievers Please Try Harder -- the
perfect out, right? Album five puts a little more muscle into the
production, torches up the vocals, cedes cameos to Neko Case and Jim
James -- and still they underwhelm. Now what's their
excuse? C+

George Strait: Love Is Everything (MCA Nashville) The
2006 Country Hall of Fame inductee is some kind of institution:
twenty-eight studio records and sixty number one hits on the Billboard
Country Charts since his 1981 debut. He's never left MCA in that
time, and he's stalwartly worked with producer Tony Brown since the
soundtrack to Pure Country, which my first girlfriend dragged
me to see in 1992 (would you believe John Doe in a major supporting
role?). So you could argue he's survived in a way that his poor
neotrad fellow traveler Randy Travis has not. But if he has, it's
purely by applying a clock-puncher's attitude to his chosen vocation:
release a mediocre record every couple of years (but not too
mediocre), leading it with a sure shot hit to make sure it clears the
bottom line. I admit, it takes a little bit of spirit and imagination
(I said a little bit) to do something with the thin conceit of "I Got
a Car." But how about "I Thought I Heard My Heart Sing?" "That's What
Breaking Hearts Do?" "When Love Comes Around Again?" The
more-accurate-than-he-knows middle-aged plaint "Sittin' on a Fence?"
And "I Got a Car" wasn't even the hit -- that would be perfunctory ode
to whoopie-makin' "Give It All We Got Tonight." It got no higher than
#7. Remember to punch your card on the way out, Georgie-Boy.
C+

Wings: Wings Over America (Hear Music) Is this
hulking dinosaur excavated from the days when live doubles were
actually live triples quality entertainment? Indeed it is, as was the
evening I saw McCartney myself in 1990, when he anti-climatically
opened with Flowers in the Dirt's "Figure of Eight" and royally
embarrassed himself by inserting a snippet of Martin Luther King's "I
Have a Dream" speech in the coda of "The Fool on the Hill." But then
as now, once you objectively remove yourself from the excitement of
seeing a real live ex-Beatle in the flesh, there's too much to
forgive. Even mentally separating this behemoth into its original
six-vinyl-sides, Denny Laine remains impossible to avoid, from the
pathetic Moody Blues revival ("See! I had hits in the sixties, too!")
to the inexplicable "Richard Cory" cover (unless "But I work in his
factory/And I curse the life I'm living," is underhanded protest).
The acoustic set in the middle in particular is a disgrace,
bowdlerizing not one but three Beatles classics (with the shit-kicking
bass line at the end of "I've Just Seen a Face" only the worst of many
indignities), with McCartney himself at his most clearly disengaged
("How does 'Blackbird' end again?"). Why does the crowd hoop and
holler after Jimmy McCulloch's abysmal roman à bass clef
"Medicine Jar?" Are they stoned? And why does McCartney sing
"Do me a flavor" in the chorus of "Let 'Em In?" Is he stoned?
And what did drummer Joe English mean when he told Macca biographer
Peter Ames Carlin that overdubs were necessary for this record because
"people were singing out of tune?" Is that why "Cook of the House"
wasn't on the nightly set list? Docked a notch because I can't see
the explosions on "Live and Let Die" in my living room. C+

Wayne Shorter: Without a Net (Blue Note) In space, no
one can hear you play soprano sax. B